Torment
by HeavyFlowers
Summary: When Sam moves in with Beck and the pack he's a fragile shell of the boy he was before. His traumatic past haunts him, and it's an impossible struggle for Beck to win a smile most days. But Beck is determined not to give up, he fights to keep the boy anchored throughout it all... But what if Sam's past isn't the only thing tormenting him?


**Torment**

**...**

_Sam_

_..._

I thought about running to Beck.

Alone in the dark, swaddled beneath the heavy folds of my duvet, I felt as young and helpless as any eight year old could. The paper birds I'd strung to the ceiling above me wheeled in the air, their wings tapping a skittish rhythm against each other as cool air blew through them from the vents.

I blinked my eyes wide in the night. They were itchy and dry from lack of sleep but I didn't dare close them.

The soft tread of feet shifted leisurely in the carpet outside my closed bedroom door. Slow and purposeful in their near-silence. The glinting silver of my doorknob let out a thin, metallic creak in the black, enveloping dark. It began to turn slowly.

_Shelby_.

I flinched and clenched the thick padding of the duvet tighter around me. My heart had begun to stretch inside my chest, thumping. I felt like a pair of eyeballs floating in the darkness, the rest of my body thin and weightless with fear.

I thought again of going to Beck, but as soon as I'd imagined it-tossing my puddled covers off and slipping barefooted to the cool fuzzy carpet-Shelby had already opened the door.

She closed it behind her back with a seamless, wooshing _snick (_so sudden and so precise ) The air I'd been breathing in startled, rushing in only to get caught in my throat as a strangled gasp. Shelby leveled her eyes on me from across the room, her dark orbs black and unrelenting in the pale oval of her face. Her white hair seemed to glow in the darkness. It hung limp and expressionless over her placid gaze. I was stiff with terror as she stalked over to my bedside. She towered over me.

"Shelby," I tried, but my voice was small and timid and weak. Faded from the hours I'd spent in silence.

She said nothing, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes in a detached, calculating movement. It made me think of a wolf, cooly regarding the death throes of its already gutted prey. Biding its time, waiting for the dying animal to stop its useless flailing. _There's nothing you can gain by struggling,_ her shadowed eyes seemed to say.

The fact that she'd probably looked up this predatory behavior on her computer and was now merely mimicking it did nothing to dispel the fear within me. I thought about yelling, calling out for Beck-

-Her hand slid firmly over my mouth as if she'd heard my thoughts, her skin cold and soft (damp with anticipation). I jerked in reflexive panic, letting out a small noise.

"Mmph!" My small fists were tangled in my sheets.

"Sh, sh, shh." she hissed mechanically above me, a strange delight lifting the corners of her pale lips. It sounded like a laugh in the hazy darkness, and it was unsettling enough to force me into a rigid quiet. I lay stiffly on my back in the blankets, my heart jumping against my ribs.

She slid my covers to the edge of my bed and, her hand still on my mouth, her fingertips brushed the soft skin of my cheek.

"Sam," she said, and my name was a cruel smile in her voice, "Li-ttle-boy Sam." I was starkly reminded of the bright colorful children's books my parents used to read to me. _Little boy Sam crossed the river. Little boy Sam__ found a toad..._

'Are you going to be a good boy, Sam?" she murmured, her eyes turning glassy as a faraway look seemed to come over them. Like she wasn't really there at all. It sounded strangely as if she were parroting something.

I couldn't say a thing. For a moment she just stood there, quietly stroking my cheek, the only sound the breathy rush of cool air above us tumbling from the vents. And then the hand sealed over my mouth trickled down to my neck. It curled around it firmly. Loosely choking me.

All of a sudden I was filled with the strong urge to swallow, but I couldn't. Her black eyes bored into mine.

"Do you know why every pack has an omega?" she said. Her voice was light and fanciful, as if she were reciting the lines of a fairytale to me. Her other hand began to snake down the belly of my favorite night shirt. Loose gray and far too big, it was stained with bleach and had small holes near the collar. Beck had lent it to me from his own shoulders one night when I'd shifted unexpectedly outside the back yard. He'd come running at the sound of my frightened tears. Shelby pushed it now up to my chin.

"Shelby..." I tried again.

"Every pack has an omega cause wolves _hate_ weakness and fear."

She trailed a line down the bare skin of my stomach with her blunt fingernail. It was jagged and sharp. She moved it back up to pet my cheek lightly, her fingers straying to twist in the black strands of my hair.

"_I can smell it on you_." she breathed. I felt my eyes widen even more and I was acutely aware of how fast my naked chest was rising and falling. She ran her hand down my belly again, all of her fingers hooking into claws. Stinging.

I whimpered.

"The other wolves like to put the omega wolf in its place." she said simply, raking my stomach again, "And they'll do anything to protect their rank in the pack."

Seeing her small, breathless grin as she looked down at me, I began to struggle, squirming in her grip. Her nails flashed and a sharper pain than any before shot down the soft skin of my belly. I cried out, but the grip around my neck tightened, pressing my head deep into the pillows.

"_Rahh_!" The raspy hiss that escaped through her snarled, human teeth sent my heart hammering in my ears. The sound of it reminded me of the velociraptors in that movie _Jurassic Park_ that Paul had let me watch with him one night when Beck was out buying groceries. It had given me nightmares for weeks.

I thrashed in my bed wildly, my half-closed hand bumping against first my knee and then the wall in a mindless panic. She sliced the raw skin of my stomach again, tearing it with her human hands. Like she had claws. Her dark eyes glittered above me coldly.

"Pretty-boy Sam," she singsonged, her breath ghosting over my face in a rush of shaky laughter, "Everybody likes you so much, you pretty-boy Sam." She stopped her attack for a moment, and my searing chest shuddered as it rose and fell beneath her. At some point she'd clambered up onto the bed next to me. She leaned over me now, rubbing her cheek slowly against my face. Lovingly, like a cat. But I could feel her grin and hear the sharp, staccato inhales of her sniffing. As if she really could smell the bone-rotting fear curdling in my stomach.

She pressed her nose, inhaling strongly, right in the center of my ear, a sensation that was as ticklish as it was terrifying. Goosebumps prickled up my neck and I think I made a sound but it was strangled by her hand around my throat. One of my feet, small and bare, jerked helplessly on the sheets beneath me.

"Well everybody might like you best, but I think you _stink_. You smell so afraid all the time, don't you Sammy-Sam-Sam?"

And then.

'I want you to be the omega.'

Shelby's clawlike hand swiped jaggedly down my chest and down, down my belly. But it didn't stop there. Sharp nails digging into my skin, she hooked her fingers over the waistband of my pajama pants (Scooby-Doo & the Mystery Gang) and brought them puddling to my feet.

"..." I tried to scream, my eyes squeezing shut in cringing terror, but Shelby's hand was a crushing band of iron around my throat. I flailed, a disorganized clutter of movements, frightened and horrified to be mostly naked before her glinting gaze. Hot tears squeezed helplessly from the corners of my eyes.

Shelby held me there, staring at me again in that calm, emotionless manner. I was torn between covering myself-my scrawny knees curling up to my chest and struggling to stay there, twitching helplessly-and reaching for the fingers burrowing deeply around my neck. Something deeper than fear thrummed in my veins, shooting my muscles through with ice.

"The omega lies belly-up in a submissive position, leaving it's soft flesh open to attack." she quoted, hand becoming a claw again in the air above me, black eyes distant and unforgiving. I choked, trying so hard to scream that it felt like the very skin of my face was about to burst open. Her hand plunged again, and now it was a frenzied, animal digging, sharp nails scraping and sliding down my belly and between my legs. I thrashed blindly.

...

* * *

...

_Beck_

...

A loud animal yell, shrill in its fury, rattled me from sleep. I jerked to wakefulness in the dim light of my study, the paperback book I'd fallen asleep to tumbling from my hand to the floor. I shoved myself from the warm, plush fabric of my office chair (still molded to the shape of my loose limbs) and jolted to my feet.

I stumbled for a moment, my mind a step behind my body, and then I heard a loud _thump_ shudder through the walls of the house. I ran from the room and, nearly crashing into Ulrik, I saw that the two other adult members of the pack living in the house had been woken by the noise too. Paul was stubble-faced and grim, moving forcefully through the hallway. Ulrik was agitated and frowning, following closely in the alpha's wake to Sam's room.

_Sam_.

I burst forwards, shoving by them to get to the source of the howling. Charging up the stairs, I skipped the last five steps and made it to the landing in one fear-fueled leap. A whirlwind of images blew through my head: Sam's golden eyes clouding with agony as his skin split itself apart, the silent tremble of his thin eight year old body as he fell to his knees cradling his scarred wrists, his warm tan fur bristling in mistaken fear as the older members of the pack launched themselves at each other in a playful rough-house. These were visions that haunted me ceaselessly, both in my waking and my sleep.

I wrenched open the door. And stumbled.

Shelby was on top of Sam, both of them on the floor. The sheets of Sam's bed were tangled and thrown every which way, evidence of a violent struggle. Shelby was howling, her small mouth filled with blood, sharp white teeth flashing in animal fury. She was pummeling Sam, kicking and tearing at him with all of her limbs. He was still and, perhaps most shocking, naked beneath her, his pale honey skin smeared with blood. I couldn't hear him through the frightful snarling. His face was hidden by his arms.

I lunged forwards and, hardly thinking, tore Shelby off him. She shrieked, blonde hair swinging as she thrashed her head, clawing at empty air. She was absolutely demonic in her rage. And, even as the sheer horror of it struck me, I felt a fierce pang of hurt for her. No child should have known emotions like this. What she'd gone through... The hurt within me doubled.

And for just a moment, the split of a heartbeat, as I looked at Sam, small and beaten and crumpled on the floor, I saw Shelby from the past. How I'd first met her. I shook my head, momentarily at a loss to do anything but keep her apart from both myself and the huddled slip of a boy bleeding on the floor.

Paul and Ulrik exploded into the doorway behind me. Somehow, without speaking, they knew what to do. Ulrik took Shelby from me, hoisting her up in the air by her armpits like some deranged trophy and marching her from the room. Paul crouched over Sam, the slant of his shoulders strong and protective, and carefully went about picking the child up from the floor. Piece by piece.

I cast about for the child's clothes, and I spotted his pajamas tangled in the sheets of his bed. Something sharp twisted inside me at the sight of his discarded clothing, an emotion deep and nameless that could only be explained by this: _Sam was my baby_...

Now I could hear his crying.

It was a slow sort of sobbing-he seemed too dazed to do much more than gasp wetly, his yellow eyes dark with uncomprehending hurt. Shelby shrieked again from the other room, Ulrik's voice rising with it in a firm Germanic babble. Paul glanced at me meaningfully, still crouched and holding Sam up delicately by his thin arms. His expression was a question. _Can you handle this?__  
_

I nodded, walking Sam's clothes back over to him. Paul handed the boy off to me and stalked back out into the hallway, following the sound of Shelby's screaming.

"I'll be back." he said, bringing the door to an almost-close behind him, shrouding Sam's bedroom in a fragile bubble of quiet. Too quiet.

Sam had grown still and empty in my hands. His brilliant gold eyes were dull, heavy-lidded. He looked as if he were a thousand miles away from the frail, naked child before me. I hurriedly pulled his sleep shirt over his head, a twinge of fondness plucking through me as I realized it was one of mine. I was about to replace his pajama bottoms but, seeing how my grey shirt hung past the boy's knees and his thin, scrawny legs were dripping with blood, I decided it might do more harm than good.

(It was impossible to tell just where the source of the bleeding was-I'd acted too quickly to check)

And besides, I thought to myself darkly, it was the internal injuries that worried me the most with Sam. I shook him by his shoulders lightly.

"Sam-Hey. I need you here buddy."

His piercing yellow eyes slid over mine dully as he finally lifted his head to face me. He had a red, angry cut just under his left eye and his raven hair was tousled and mussed, sticking up on one side. His tiny shoulders heaved with his uneven breaths, fragile balls of bone beneath the pressing weight of my palms.

"Sam... Sam."

I picked the child up by his arms and, grabbing a fistful of his spilled covers, I wrapped him in the comforting folds of his warm duvet. Set him on my knee. Patted his back. _Thump..Thump..Thump_.

He remained silent and still under my hands, the delicate curve of his skull leaning heavily into my chest as if he no longer had the strength to hold it up himself. I ran a hand through his black baby-soft wisps, frowning.

This was the point where anybody else would have tried something else, started talking or making funny faces. Anything to elicit a response out of the child.

But I knew there was simply nothing to be done but hold him and wait. Wait for him to come back from whatever internal plain was reflecting dimly out of Sam's hooded golden eyes.

Sam had gone into his box.

...

* * *

...

_Disclaimer: I do not own and am not responsible for any of the material in the wonderful books by Maggie Stiefvater._

_Author's note:_

_Hey there,_

_Thanks for reading. I've just recently discovered this trilogy, but without a doubt I've fallen in love. I haven't even finished 'Forever' yet, but I expect that won't be the case for very long haha. Anyway, even though I've only been reading her work for a few days, Ms Maggie Stiefvater's books have thoroughly distracted me from my own. And they've filled my head with tremendous amounts of fanfiction. This is probably only the first to come. I would like to add another chapter to round up this one, seeing as I left it on a bit of an unleavable note there._

_So mainly this was written for my own purposes, as will be everything else that I write on here. But reviews are always appreciated, particularly if they are nice and friendly. To be completely honest harsh and unnecessarily cruel comments will be glanced at and then tossed out with the trash because, unless I can find something helpful about your criticism that I feel makes sense and/or improves my writing in a way that I feel is smart-I'm not going to give it the time of day. I don't say this to invite flames of course haha, but simply to let anyone know that I won't be putting any weight to anything said in a rude or condescending manner._

_On another note-poor baby Sam :( He makes me want to bake him cookies and tell him happy bedtime stories and take him on peaceful walks in a garden. Such a sad, dissociative thing he is. He deserves all the hugs. Am I right?_

_Happy reading,_

_~Heavy Flowers_


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